Boy, 3, discovers loaded handgun in his back garden - then his big brother fires it at parked car

Tuesday 11 March 2008 00:37 BST

A mother told yesterday how playtime turned to horror when her two sons found and fired a loaded pistol in their back garden.

Nimco Guled, 38, said her three-year-old, Mahde, spotted the gun on the grass while playing outside.

He called his older brother Warsme, 11, over to look at it.

Thinking it was a toy, Warsme grabbed the gun and ran around playing soldiers with his little brother in the communal car park behind their home.

Scroll down for more...

Relief: Nimco Guled with her sons Warsme and Mahde

Then he pulled the trigger, discharging a single round, which hit a parked car. The windscreen was smashed, but no one injured.

Afraid that he would be in trouble with his mother, who was inside the house, Warsme took the gun to a neighbour, who phoned police.

Around a dozen officers arrived and Warsme and Miss Guled, from Smethwick, West Midlands, were taken to the police station and questioned.

It is believed the gun had been thrown over the garden fence by a criminal trying to dispose of it. Police are carrying out tests but have yet to link it to any crimes.

Miss Guled, who came to Britain ten years ago after fleeing the war in her native Somalia, said: "Whoever dumped that gun here is evil and selfish.

"They have no brain and no regard for human life - how could they do that in a place where there are children living? It's a miracle that neither of my sons was hurt or killed. I have been unable to sleep just thinking about it."

The drama unfolded shortly after 9am on Saturday when the two boys went in to the garden after watching cartoons on television.

Miss Guled, a single mother, said: "I had fallen asleep and didn't realise they'd gone outside. It was only when the police knocked on my door that I realised anything had happened.

Scroll down for more...

Deadly: Three-year-old Mahde found the gun, like the one below, in the garden in Smethwick

"I shudder to think what could have happened. Mahde found the gun but didn't touch it.

"Warsme picked it up. He thought it was a toy and held it out in front of him and pulled the trigger.

"He said he'd fired it once and it jammed and then he fired it again and it went though the car. The force of it made his arm fly right back over his head and the gun flew out of his hand on to the ground behind him.

"We were in the police station all morning and it was only when I was watching Warsme being interviewed that it hit me what could have happened and I started crying.

"Now I feel like I'm the luckiest mother in the world that no one was hurt. It could have killed my children or any of the others who play out there.

"It's so frightening. What kind of a world are we living in?"

Warsme's father was killed during the conflict in Somalia. Miss Guled also has a son, Mohammed, 19, living in Kenya, where the family first fled after leaving Somalia, and a daughter Samera, 18, who is at college in Britain.

The incident emerged yesterday as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was vowing to keep guns off the streets during a visit to the new National Ballistics Intelligence Service at West Midlands Police's headquarters in Birmingham.

When told about the brothers finding the gun, she said: "Incidents like this are very sad but I'm confident that this system will help us to report all kinds of gun incidents quicker, and trace the source of guns so that we can reassure communities."